19 Jul
2016
19 Jul
'16
1:20 p.m.
On Jul 19, 2016, at 4:02 PM, Mouse <mouse at
Rodents-Montreal.ORG> wrote:
What bandwidth (deflection rate) do you need? Full scale in a microsecond? In 10
microseconds?
Piezoelectric loudspeakers work up into ultrasonic range. A mirror attached to such an
actuator would give you variable deflection. So 10 microseconds might be doable.
A faster (no moving parts) scheme might be to use Kerr cells. I don't know if that
has been done, but from what I understand about the Kerr effect it seems plausible that it
could be.
paul
> Light show hobby.
You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser
beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a
laser and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall - but
that requires some very fast acceleration of the spot, probably faster
than mechanical deflection can support (though if I'm wrong I'd love to
know it). For example, does piezoelectricity make a crystal distort
enough to use it as an optical deflection element in such a scheme?
(My guess is no, but I don't actually know.)
I have SPARCstations with cg6s that I can use as vector displays, but
they are vectors converted to raster. I'd like to do real vector - a
parallel port driving a couple of moderately fast D->A converters might
be able to do it; it might take something better, dunno. But without
the deflection mechanism there's no point in even trying to design the
rest of it.